UNLV researcher earns Reid award for teen pregnancy work

Ramona Denby-Brinson is taking one for UNLV’s team of social science researchers.

Denby-Brinson is the 2015 recipient of the Harry Reid Silver State Research Award. She’s the first woman to receive that recognition.

“This award is not about me,” she said Thursday. “It’s a recognition of the importance of social science research. When we think about research and big discoveries, we tend to think of chemistry, engineering and medicine, and that’s great, but social science research is so vital, too. It means the difference around the quality of people’s lives, and in this case, abuse of kids and their mental health functioning.”

Denby-Brinson, whose research mainly focuses on child welfare and children’s mental health, will receive the award on Tuesday during UNLV’s Academic Achievement Awards Ceremony Gala.

The award was created in 2001 to honor longtime U.S. Sen. Reid, D-Nev., and faculty performing significant research responsive to needs throughout the state.

The recognition comes with a $10,000 stipend.

During her 17 years at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Denby-Brinson has conducted numerous studies.

She teaches in the School of Social Work and is also a senior resident scholar at the university’s Lincy Institute.

The five-year research project she is currently conducting is designed to prevent pregnancy among the foster child population in Clark County and help them build healthy relationships. The project is in its fourth year.

During the past four years, the program has taken about 140 young people, ages 12-21, who were or are in the child welfare system.

Denby-Brinson has various project partners in the community, including the Clark County Department of Family Services.

Based on 2012 data, Nevada’s average teen birth rate was 53.5 per 1,000, higher than the national average of 41.5 per 1,000.

Twenty-five percent of the state’s teen pregnancies occurred in five Clark County ZIP codes — 89030, 89110, 89115, 89101, and 89108, according to data Denby-Brinson gathered.

Those areas also correlate to the county’s highest concentration of reports of child abuse and neglect.

In Clark County, an estimated 23 percent of about 3,500 juveniles in foster care was pregnant or parenting, according to her 2012 data collected from the Department of Family Services.

She suspects the actual rates were much higher.

“What we are trying to do is prevent the kids from becoming pregnant, and in some cases, becoming pregnant the second time,” she said. “Even though teen pregnancy rates across the country have dropped dramatically in the past decade, they haven’t dropped for the kids who are in foster care and that’s because the interventions that we use for a typical teenager do not work for foster kids.”

Denby-Brinson explained that pregnancies among girls in foster care are often not accidental, but deliberate.

They become pregnant because they are trying to replace the family they’ve lost.

“Through the baby, it’s a deliberate attempt to build that love and support ... to replace the family that they didn’t have,” she said. “So the things that we do with regular teenagers won’t necessarily work with this population.”

With the foster care population, the emotional piece needs to be addressed first, before talking about reproductive health, she said.

“It’s the grief, loss and trauma they’ve experienced that is so critical,” she explained. “A lot of times they don’t recognize what they are feeling is grief and loss, so we talk to them about that process so that they don’t have a baby to be the substitute for that family.”

The project is funded through a $2.5 million grant from the federal Children’s Bureau, an office of the Administration for Children and Families.

Some of her other research projects have dealt with children’s mental health issues and developing intervention models that are effective in helping children recover from traumatic experiences.

It’s unfortunate that it has taken this long for a woman researcher to win this award, considering it’s 2015, said Constance Brooks, vice chancellor for government &community affairs at the Nevada System of Higher Education.

“I’m glad that woman is her,” Brooks, who nominated her for the award, said Friday. “We are all beneficiaries from her work.”

Denby-Brinson goes after unique grant opportunities, Brooks said. She has been instrumental in bringing in millions of research dollars to UNLV. From 1996 to 2014, she had been awarded $10.5 million in competitive research grants.

Added Brooks: “She is one of the most brilliant researchers I’ve had the opportunity to work with.”

Contact Yesenia Amaro at yamaro@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0440. Find her on Twitter: @YeseniaAmaro